Nio‘s ES9 flagship SUV sold 7,706 units in China in September, up 19.0% from August and its highest monthly total since June, according to China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) data.
The model sold 6,474 units in August and 6,311 in July, when it posted its first month-on-month decline. Only June, the ES9’s first full month on sale, was higher, at 8,595 units.
The ES9 accounted for 36.2% of the Nio brand’s 21,277 retail sales in China in September and 20.7% of the 37,231 recorded by Nio Inc. across its Nio, Onvo and Firefly brands.
Closing In on the ES8
The flagship narrowed the gap with the ES8, Nio’s best-selling model, which sold 10,539 units in China in September, down 4.1% from 10,991 in August.
The ES9 starts 91,200 yuan ($13,600) above the six- and seven-seat ES8, which is priced from 406,800 yuan ($60,700).
ES9 sales equaled 73.1% of the ES8’s in September, up from 58.9% in August.
Together, the two large SUVs made up 85.8% of the Nio brand’s retail sales in China in the month.
The rest of the brand’s lineup, led by the ET5 Touring, accounted for 3,032 units.
Nio-brand deliveries rose 55.3% from a year earlier, when the ES9 was not yet on sale, to 21,318 vehicles in September.
Nio Inc. delivered 37,408 vehicles in September, with Onvo at 8,763 and Firefly at a record 7,327, bringing its third-quarter total to 109,178 and meeting its guidance of 108,000 to 111,000.
Founder and CEO William Li has set a target of more than 40,000 deliveries a month for the group in the fourth quarter.
Four Months on Sale
The ES9 has sold 32,194 units in China since deliveries began on May 28, by EV‘s calculation from CPCA data.
The 3,108 units recorded in May covered only the last four days of the month.
The model sold 20,491 units in China in the third quarter, its first full quarter on sale.
Nio handed over the 30,000th ES9 on September 23 in Suzhou, 119 days after deliveries began by the company’s count.
That milestone implied about 5,500 handovers in the first 23 days of September.
The third batch of 10,000 deliveries took 46 days, compared with about 30 days for the first and 43 days for the second, based on Nio’s milestone dates.
Nio has exported nine ES9s through August, according to CPCA data, and has announced no plan to sell the model outside China.
Shorter Waits
Buyers of the top versions are waiting less.
The ES9 is sold as a six-seater in two cabin layouts, and all three versions come with steer-by-wire and rear-wheel steering.
Nio’s online configurator showed on Monday that the Horizon Special Edition, priced at 628,000 yuan ($93,800), and the Executive Signature, priced at 558,000 yuan ($83,400), could be collected 8 to 9 weeks after an order is locked.
That is the shortest wait for the two versions in checks since June, down from 9 to 10 weeks for the Horizon Special Edition on October 1, 11 to 12 weeks in mid-September and 16 to 17 weeks in early June.
The entry Executive Luxury, priced at 498,000 yuan ($74,400), showed 3 to 4 weeks, unchanged from September 17.
The two higher versions carry Nio’s Tianxing fully active suspension, which the entry version does without.
Li told analysts on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on September 1 that buyers placing orders would “need to wait for three months or nearly four months to pick up a new car.”
Nio offered launch benefits, including zero-deposit financing with two of five years interest-free and five years of free access to its NOP+ navigation assistance, on ES9 orders locked by September 30, after extending them from July 31.
Orders and Buyers
Li said on the same call that ES9 order intake grew from July to August, after the model spent July working through pre-orders.
“If we look at the sales number of the ES9 in August and July, I think July we were still consuming some pre-orders,” Li said.
He said about three quarters of ES9 orders came from users of other brands.
Nio has never published ES9 order or backlog figures.
The company’s vehicle margin was 18.5% in the second quarter, and management has said the ES8 and ES9 both carry margins above 20%.
The company launched the ES9 on May 27 at 498,000 to 628,000 yuan ($74,400 to $93,800), or 390,000 to 520,000 yuan ($58,300 to $77,700) under its battery-rental plan.
Each version was priced 30,000 yuan ($4,500) below its April pre-sale price.
Forecasts
Deutsche Bank has forecast ES9 sales of 56,000 units in 2026, and estimated in July that the model had an order backlog of about 40,000 vehicles.
Reaching that figure would require about 7,900 a month from October to December, a pace the model has topped only in June.
Bank of China International expected ES9 volume to settle at 3,000 to 4,000 a month once the order backlog cleared.
The ES9 has exceeded that range in each of its four full months on sale.
